"I ... I get it now." Karyn said. "I see everything now."
All the time she had spent with Jon, she now saw from two different angles. Two different sets of memories. One as Jon, and another as Karyn. The conversations they had had, the games, the encounters with Sarah McMillan and the rest of her crowd, all seen from two perspectives.
"I am Jon." she said softly. "The original Jon. You're just a copy that didn't exist until I time-travelled to 17 years ago, wished you into existence and sent you forward into time to this moment to take my place. I then wished myself into a girl named Karyn who'd be born to my parents, and live my life as Karyn completing the loop."
"Good. You get it. You remember now." Jon said. "You know what this means, don't you?"
"I know. It means the stone was affecting our lives ... my life ... whatever ... long before we ... I ... knew it existed." Karyn said. "And that means ... my best friend was me all along. I..."
Karyn suddenly found herself crying.
"What's the matter?" Jon asked, his voice awkward.
"It's ... everything." Karyn said. "Everything I thought I knew ... my life as Karyn. It was all ... I had a best friend named Karyn, and it turned out she was me all along thanks to magic wishes and time travel. I feel like I don't HAVE a best friend."
She leaned her head against her arm, sobbing, and it was not long before Jon was crying, too.
"I ... I'm you, you know." Jon said. "Or a copy of you. I ... I don't like this any more than you do. I remember using the stone to find this out, and I felt ... hurt. Even though it does explain a few things. Like how we got along so well. Deep down, I think we knew the truth all along."
Karyn was silent for a while. She wiped the tears from her eyes, and sighed. "I think I'm going to be all right. All this was a lot to take in. It's just that this is just so ... weird."
"Tell me about it." Jon said. "I don't even want to THINK about the metaphysical implications."
"And me..." Karyn said. "Next time I see your family, I'm going to be thinking of them as mine. Zoe, Mikey, your mother. I've lived a whole other life time now. Seventeen years, and I remember meeting them during my life as Karyn. But now that I remember who I was before, things will be a little awkward."
"I can imagine." Jon said. "Anyway, now we've got a greater idea of just what the stone can do. It's more powerful than we thought it was."
"I know. Anyway, I guess I'm technically the owner of the stone, since I'm the one my grandfather sent it to." Karyn said. "But you're a double of the me I was 17 years ago from my point of view, so I suppose your claim might be just as valid."
"I think I'll let you have the stone." Jon said. "You're the original, after all. But all this makes me wonder more about the stone..."
"I know." Karyn said. "What secrets could my grandfather have been keeping? Is anything else about our world the result of wishes and/or time travel? Maybe we shouldn't think about it too much. All we do know is that I know the truth about myself and Karyn... Jon ... now. Maybe for now we should just try to live our lives as normal. Our families and friends don't need to know."
Even as she said it, she knew that things would never really be the same. She would never look at the world, or any of the people she knew, the same way again.
She wondered how she was going to handle family, school, and all the other things that went with normal life.
